O Lord, open my lips.
And my mouth will proclaim your praise.
Invitatory Psalm
Psalm 94 (95)
Let us exult in the Lord’s presence.
– Let us exult in the Lord’s presence.
Come, let us rejoice in the Lord,
let us acclaim God our salvation.
Let us come before him proclaiming our thanks,
let us acclaim him with songs.
– Let us exult in the Lord’s presence.
For the Lord is a great God,
a king above all gods.
For he holds the depths of the earth in his hands,
and the peaks of the mountains are his.
For the sea is his: he made it;
and his hands formed the dry land.
– Let us exult in the Lord’s presence.
Come, let us worship and bow down,
bend the knee before the Lord who made us;
for he himself is our God and we are his flock,
the sheep that follow his hand.
– Let us exult in the Lord’s presence.
If only, today, you would listen to his voice:
“Do not harden your hearts
as you did at Meribah,
on the day of Massah in the desert,
when your fathers tested me –
they put me to the test,
although they had seen my works.”
– Let us exult in the Lord’s presence.
“For forty years they wearied me,
that generation.
I said: their hearts are wandering,
they do not know my paths.
I swore in my anger:
they will never enter my place of rest.”
– Let us exult in the Lord’s presence.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
– Let us exult in the Lord’s presence.
Hymn
The dusky veil of night hath laid
The varied hues of earth in shade;
Before thee, righteous Judge of all,
We contrite in confession fall.
Take far away our load of sin,
Our soiled minds make clean within:
Thy sovereign grace, O Christ, impart,
From all offence to guard our heart.
For lo! our mind is dull and cold,
envenomed by sin’s baneful hold:
Fain would it now the darkness flee
And seek, Redeemer, unto thee.
Far from it drive the shades of night,
Its inmost darkness put to flight;
Till in the daylight of the Blest
It joys to find itself at rest.
Almighty Father, hear our cry
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord most high,
Who with the Holy Ghost and thee
Doth live and reign eternally.
In time of defeat
Psalm 43 (44)
It was you who saved us, Lord: we will praise your name without ceasing.
Our own ears have heard, O God,
and our fathers have proclaimed it to us,
what you did in their days, the days of old:
how with your own hand you swept aside the nations
and put us in their place,
struck them down to make room for us.
It was not by their own swords that our fathers took over the land,
it was not their own strength that gave them victory;
but your hand and your strength,
the light of your face,
for you were pleased in them.
You are my God and my king,
who take care for the safety of Jacob.
Through you we cast down your enemies;
in your name we crushed those who rose against us.
I will not put my hopes in my bow,
my sword will not bring me to safety;
for it was you who saved us from our afflictions,
you who set confusion among those who hated us.
We will glory in the Lord all the day,
and proclaim your name for all ages.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
It was you who saved us, Lord: we will praise your name without ceasing.
Psalm 43 (44)
Spare us, Lord, do not let your people be put to shame.
But now, God, you have spurned us and confounded us,
so that we must go into battle without you.
You have put us to flight in the sight of our enemies,
and those who hate us plunder us at will.
You have handed us over like sheep sold for food,
you have scattered us among the nations.
You have sold your people for no money,
not even profiting by the exchange.
You have made us the laughing-stock of our neighbours,
mocked and derided by those who surround us.
The nations have made us a by-word,
the peoples toss their heads in scorn.
All the day I am ashamed,
I blush with shame
as they reproach me and revile me,
my enemies and my persecutors.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Spare us, Lord, do not let your people be put to shame.
Psalm 43 (44)
Arise, Lord! Redeem us because of your love.
All this happened to us,
but not because we had forgotten you.
We were not disloyal to your covenant;
our hearts did not turn away;
our steps did not wander from your path;
and yet you brought us low,
with horrors all about us:
you overwhelmed us in the shadows of death.
If we had forgotten the name of our God,
if we had spread out our hands before an alien god —
would God not have known?
He knows what is hidden in our hearts.
It is for your sake that we face death all the day,
that we are reckoned as sheep to be slaughtered.
Awake, Lord, why do you sleep?
Rise up, do not always reject us.
Why do you turn away your face?
How can you forget our poverty and our tribulation?
Our souls are crushed into the dust,
our bodies dragged down to the earth.
Rise up, Lord, and help us.
In your mercy, redeem us.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Arise, Lord! Redeem us because of your love.
Lord, to whom shall we go?
– You have the words of eternal life.
Reading
1 Chronicles 22:5-19
Then David said, ‘My son Solomon is young, of tender years, and the house to be built for the Lord must be of great splendour, renowned for its magnificence in every country. I will make preparations for him.’ And so, before he died, David made ample preparations. He then summoned his son Solomon and instructed him to build a house for the Lord, the God of Israel. ‘My son,’ David said to Solomon ‘my heart was set on building a house for the name of the Lord my God. But the word of the Lord came to me, “You have shed much blood and fought great battles; it is not for you to build a house for my name, since you have shed so much blood on the earth in my presence. But now a son is born to you. He shall be a man of peace and I will give him peace from all the enemies that surround him; for Solomon is his name, and in his days I will give Israel peace and quiet. He shall build a house for my name; he shall be a son to me and I a father to him, and I will make his royal throne secure in Israel for ever.” Now, my son, may the Lord be with you and give you success in building a house for the Lord your God, as he has said concerning you. Yet may he give you discretion and discernment, may he give you his orders for Israel so that you may observe the Law of the Lord your God. Success will be yours if you carefully observe the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord has prescribed to Moses for Israel. Be strong and stand fast, be fearless, be dauntless. Poor as I am, I have set aside for the house of the Lord one hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver and more bronze and iron than can be weighed; I have stored up wood and stone too, to which you must add more. You will have many workmen, stonecutters, masons, carpenters, skilled artisans of every kind, while your gold and silver, bronze and iron, will be beyond reckoning. Set to work, then, and may the Lord be with you!’
David then ordered all the Israelite leaders to help his son Solomon. ‘Is not the Lord your God with you?’ he said. ‘He has given you peace on all sides, since he has put the inhabitants of the country into my power and the land has been subdued for the Lord and for his people. So now devote heart and soul to the search for the Lord your God. Set to and build the sanctuary of the Lord your God, so that you can bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy things of God to the house that is built for the name of the Lord.’
Responsory
Set your mind on building the sanctuary of the Lord God. Let us go to his dwelling-place, let us worship at his footstool.
Thus says the Lord: My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Let us go to his dwelling-place, let us worship at his footstool.
Reading
An explanation of Psalm 118 by St Ambrose
God's temple is holy, and you are his temple
My father and I will come to him and make our home with him. Open wide your door to the one who comes. Open your soul, throw open the depths of your heart to see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the sweetness of grace. Open your heart and run to meet the Sun of eternal light that illuminates all men. Indeed that true light shines on all; but if anyone closes his shutters against it then he will defraud himself of the eternal light. To close the doors of your mind is to exclude Christ. Of course he is capable of entering even so, but he does not want to force his way in or seize you against your will.
Born of the Virgin’s womb, he shone on the whole world to give light to all. It is received by those who desire the brightness of perpetual light that no night can obscure. For the sun that we see daily in the sky is followed by darkness and night; but the Sun of righteousness never sets, since evil cannot defeat wisdom.
Blessed is he, therefore, at whose door Christ comes knocking. Faith is the door of the soul, and if it is strong then it fortifies the whole house. Through this door Christ enters. Thus it is that the Church herself says, The voice of my brother is knocking on the door. Listen to him knocking, listen to him asking to be let in: Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew, my hair with the drops of night.
You see that when the Word of God knocks hardest on your door, it is when his hair is wet with the dew of the night. In fact he chooses to visit those who are in tribulation and trial, lest one of them be overwhelmed by distress. So his head is covered with dew, with drops, when his body is labouring hard. It is important to keep watch so that when the Bridegroom comes, he is not shut out. If you are asleep and your heart is not keeping watch, he will go away without knocking; but if your heart is alert for his coming, he knocks and asks for the door to be opened to him.
Thus you see that our soul has a door, but we have gates too, as the psalm says: Gates, raise your heads. Stand up, eternal doors, and let the king of glory enter. If you choose to raise your gates, the King of glory will come to you, celebrating the triumph of his own Passion. For righteousness has gates, as we see it written when the Lord Jesus speaks through his prophets: Open to me the gates of righteousness.
It is the soul that has its door, it is the soul that has its gates. To that door Christ comes and knocks, he knocks at the door. Open to him, therefore: he wishes to come in, the Bridegroom wishes to find you keeping watch.
Responsory
Listen! I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into his house and eat with him, and he will eat with me.
How happy is that servant if his master finds him doing this when he comes home. I will come into his house and eat with him, and he will eat with me.
Let us pray.
Lord God,
when our world lay in ruins,
you raised it up again on the foundation of your Son’s Passion and Death.
Give us grace to rejoice in the freedom from sin
which he gained for us,
and bring us to everlasting joy.
We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.
Amen.
